Detached Ideas

Photograph by Steven Pinker

Recently, I enjoyed reading Rebecca Goldstein’s  36 Argu­ments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. It is a novel of ideas which explores the intersec­tion of intel­lec­tual life and spiritual life. The protagonist, Cass Seltzer, is an academic, a psychologist of religion whose sur­prise best-seller, Varieties of Religious Illusion, has led to his acclaim as “America’s favorite atheist.” More­over, Cass has just been offered a job by Harvard — the epitome of academic success. But in juxtaposition to this professional career, Cass reveals an inner life that is preoccu­pied with issues of meaning and trans­cen­dence. We observe those “obstinate question­ings of sense and out­ward things” that are characteristic of the religious percipient. So if this is atheism, we wonder, how is atheism essentially dif­fer­ent from theism?

Goldstein describes her point of departure for the novel as follows:

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This post is about a remarkable man who I have been fortunate to have as my friend. Philip Barlow is a Mormon and a scholar of American religion; he earned his B.A. in History from Weber State College in 1975, his M.T.S. from Harvard in 1980, and his Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School in 1988. He taught Religion at Hanover College — a Presbyterian School — until 2007, when he was appointed the Leonard J. Arring­ton Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.

Last summer I reread Phil’s book, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion, pub­lished in 1991, by Oxford University Press. This is a book that deserves the many accolades it has received; it is an honest and thoughtful dis­cussion of scriptural inter­pretation and religious belief in Mormonism. One reason that this dis­cussion is important for non-Mormons is that it con­cerns the early stages — more accessible than in main­stream Christianity or Judaism — in the development of a religious tradition. The recent appearance of Mormonism, and its extensive docu­men­ta­tion, comprise a valuable resource for understanding how religions in general evolve. Especially interesting to me is the unique relation of Mormon scriptural exe­gesis to secular philosophy and changing standards in textual criticism.[1]

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1. Massimo Introvigne suggests an apparent ‘inversion’ in Mormonism, whereby liberal theological thought is more closely identified with modernism and con­servative thought with postmodernism. See “The Book of Mormon Wars: A Non-Mormon Perspective“, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 5, no. 2 (1966), 1-25. I do not know what Phil thinks of this — although similar intriguing ideas are suggested by his own work. One of the advantages of studying a culture which is “strange yet familiar”, it seems to me, is that it enables us to discover the contingency of intellectual connections that we otherwise just assume. [↩]

The name “positivism” comes from the writing of Auguste Comte, the 19th century philosopher of science and founder of sociology.  In his Course of Positive Philosophy, published from 1830 through 1842, Comte described human history as progressing through three distinct stages, which he called the theological, metaphysical, and positive – the final stage corresponding to the ordering of society by modern science. Comte’s positive philosophy was quite influential in the nineteenth century. According to Michel Bourdeau:

It is difficult today to appreciate the interest Comte’s thought enjoyed a century ago, for it has received almost no notice during the last five decades. Before the First World War, Comte’s movement was active nearly everywhere in the world. The best known case is that of Latin America: Brazil, which owes the motto on its flag ‘Ordem e Progresso’ (Order and Progress) to Comte and Mexico are two prominent examples. The positivists, i.e., the followers of Comte, were equally active in England, the United States and India. And in the case of Turkey, its modern secular character can be traced to Comte’s influence on the Young Turks.[1]

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1. Michel Bourdeau, “Auguste Comte”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010). [↩]

‘Theodore Dalrymple’ is the pen-name of Dr. Anthony Daniels, retired British doctor, contributing editor for the City Journal, author, and eloquent conservative obser­ver of contem­po­rary culture. Recently, Daniels was invited to give the annual John Kenneth Galbraith Lecture at Memorial University in Newfoundland. The Galbraith Revival is a reflection on that experience.

Other articles to try include: They dance, I take the dog for a walk, What is Poverty?, What the New Atheists Don’t See, False Apology Syndrome, and All Sex, All the Time. There is a directory of Dalrymple’s City Journal work here.

–Paul

by Johann Sebastian Bach

The Cantata “Actus Tragicus”, BWV 106, is one of Bach’s greatest cantatas. Here is Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Part II), from a wonderful performance on period instruments by Joshua Rifkin and The Bach Ensemble.

actus.mp3

Recorded in 1985, Joshua Rifkin and The Bach Ensemble, with Ann Monoyios, Steven Rickards, Edmund Brownless, Jan Opalach. Decca

God created the integers; the rest is the work of man.

– Leopold Kronecker

I.

What are we saying when we talk about music?

This question captures the paradox that lies at the heart of musical theory. Put in its most basic form, the problem that has dogged musical theory since Boethius has to do with the relationship between reason and the esthetic sense. The earliest theories show that the coexistence between the two was never an entirely easy one:

In the final analysis, it was to this that the Pythagoreans’ harmonic analysis of the universe led: the discovery of incommensurables. And no matter how they might juxtapose the numbers, no matter to what lengths they might extend their mathematical circumlocutions, one fact remained, a fact that has ever since proved resistant to mathematical rationalization: there is no fraction m/n that will divide the whole-tone into two equal parts.[1]

The Pythagorean construction of music was an attempt at reconciling the rational and the beautiful — at showing that they are, indeed, one and the same. In this sense it was a corollary to the impulse behind the Parthenon: the Athenians believed that the golden ratio, applied to every dimension of a structure, would create something that was beautiful precisely because of its mathematical perfection.

In music, as mentioned in the previous quote, this dream was quickly shown to be illusory. While the Parthenon was constructed ex nihilo, and could perfectly mirror the rational dreams of its designers, the Pythagorean theorists of music were con­fronted from the beginning with a stubborn fact: there were pre-existing and deeply engrained notions of what constituted the proper and beautiful in music — the whole tone, the semi-tone, the modes, the tuning of the lyre — and, although they hovered tantalizingly close to the realm of reason, they ultimately eluded its grasp.

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Over the past decade the identity of Spengler, the pseudonymous Asian Times colum­nist, has been the subject of considerable speculation. Last week, Spengler finally revealed himself to be David P. Goldman — classical musician, philo­sopher, conser­va­tive economist, and senior financial officer for Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, and Bank of America.

Spengler’s columns are dense, oracular, and provocative — it is prudent to ingest them in small quantities. They are remarkably erudite, and show an impressive command of cultural and religious history. Although I might take issue with particular conclusions, the scope and intensity of his thought is invariably bracing.  By his own esti­mate, the Asian Times columns reached a million readers, and the high level of pub­lic interest is evidenced by the 5000 or so registered participants in the Spengler Forum.

Some interesting Spengler essays to try are:

Overcoming ethnicity
Socrates the destroyer
Tolkien’s Ring: When immortality is not enough
Benedict XVI is magnificently right
This almost-chosen, almost-pregnant land

The most recent Spengler column is about the Susan Boyle phe­nomenon.  He says:

Meanwhile, in China, 60 million children are learning Western classi­cal music under the gimlet gaze of strict teachers. East Asian singers, parti­cularly Koreans, are working their way up the ranks of provincial opera companies, and every one of them sings better than Boyle. Who do you think is going to run the world 20 years from now? As the Italians say, we’re bolliti, “boiled”.  Now we can spell it with a “y”.  I hate to always be the one to say this, but the hope is fatuous. No, you can’t.

These talent spectacles, Spengler observes, betray an undercurrent of self-worship; we choose to pay homage to what is like us rather than what is above us.

David Goldman has a new home as associate editor at First Things.

–Paul

On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave an address to the Faculty of Science at the University of Regensburg entitled Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections. This address was widely reported by the press, especially the Pope’s remarks about Islam in which he cited the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus’ contention that violence is incompatible with the nature of God.  In the aftermath there were riots and demonstrations, diplomatic protests were lodged throughout the world, and a nun was killed in Mogadishu. Here is the Wikipedia description of the con­tro­versy.

More interesting to me, and not reported by the press much at all, is the rest of what Benedict had to say at Regensburg.  At risk of simplifying, I will pick out three major points:

1) Benedict claimed that Christianity must be viewed within the broader context of Greek philosophy. “This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history — it is an event which concerns us even today.”  (This is in response to what the Pope referred to as the “call for the dehellenization of Christianity”.)

2) He positioned the Church explicitly on the side of modern science. ”The scien­tific ethos, moreover, is. . .the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit.”

3) He called into question logical positivism — citing the unity of human reason and the “intrin­sically Platonic element” in science.

Spengler remarks somewhere that the Catholic Church is one of the few modern institutions that finishes its conversations. This should be reason enough, I think, to attend to the remainder of Benedict’s address. In my opinion, there is considerable philosophical sophistication in the Pope’s comments.  Even for those of us who are not Catholic, the Regensburg address provides a refreshing counterpoint to the flat land­scape of postmodernism.  I recommend that you read it.

–Paul

Robert L. Horn was a philosopher, scholar, teacher and mentor to several gene­rations of students and young philo­sophers. He grew up near Richmond, Indiana, earned his B.A. from Earlham College, his Th.D. from Union Theological Semi­nary, taught at Haver­ford Col­lege (1958-1961), Union Theological Seminary (1960-1966), and was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In 1966 he was lured back to Earlham, where he taught for roughly thirty years. His area of specialization was in Kant, Hegel, and the Danish Hegelians who com­prised the context for Søren Kierkegaard. He also had a deep interest in Plato, especially in the illumi­na­tion of the dialogues by historical and archaeolo­gical research. as well as in Native American culture and astronomy.

It was with great pleasure that I learned, last year, of the publication of Robert Leslie Horn, Positivity and Dialectic: A Study of the Theological Method of Hans Lassen Mar­ten­sen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre and C. A. Rietzel, Copenhagen, 2007.  I think Bob might have been pleased that it was published by Kierkegaard’s publisher, Rietzel. Here are some snippets from the editor’s introduction:

The present work was originally a dissertation for the degree of Th.D. at the Union Theological Semi­nary in New York City in 1969.  For years now, it has been known as a kind of insider’s tip among the small circle of Anglophone scholars interested in Danish Golden Age theology. Unfortunately, the work was never published, and its reception has until now been limited to those who personally knew the author or had access to it via the university microfilm dissertation service. . .

Although it was written more than twenty-five years ago, this text still today must be regarded as one of the leading works on Danish Golden Age philosophy and theology in the English language. . . .the present work can be said to anticipate a number of historically oriented studies of Søren Kierkegaard’s works that have been published over the last decade or so by leading scholars. . . .In this respect it is to be praised as an outstanding pioneering effort in the field.  However, unlike many other pioneering works, its scholarly standard is extremely high. . .

There can be no doubt that when this work comes to be more generally known by students and scholars alike, it will contribute immensely to our appreciation of the work of Hans Lassen Martensen. Moreover, it will help to put the philosophy and theology of Søren Kierkegaard in a new perspective. . .

There is so much more that could be said about Bob Horn. It was an extraordinary privilege to study with him. I thought of Bob when I read Nathan’s post mentioning Schoenberg’s comment to Karl Kraus: “I have per­haps learned more from you than one is permitted to learn if one wishes to remain independent.”

–Paul

I am not much interested in the hidden intentions Shakespeare had in writing Macbeth, whether he was striving to portray the immortal torment of the human soul or merely to flatter the self-importance of an English King. I’ll leave that to the scholars and hecklers of the human spirit who can find nothing better to do than to dig around in the dust-bins of history. I am interested in the play as it stands. In particular, I am interested in the “weird sisters.” I think we should take the damn witches seriously.

Readers have scoffed for centuries at the three witches in Macbeth. But nowadays we are not satisfied with scoffing at witches, and we seek to go further. Nowadays our literary critics herald “the death of the author” as Nietzsche once spoke of “the death of God.” There is only the text, they say, and the doer behind the deed is a metaphysical fiction. But if skepticism is our value we should also show skepticism about our skepticism. We should be suspicious of the grandiose claims of Nietzsche and our contemporary literary critics and suspect, in the spirit of Mark Twain, that reports of the death of God and of authorship are greatly exaggerated. Authors and gods are tough things to kill. As Shakespeare wove the witches into Macbeth in diverse and subtle ways, gods and authors weave themselves into the fabric of our world. Perhaps in time we could “kill them,” but should we? Would life be better, more worth living, in a disenchanted world?

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Logical positivism was a philosophical movement that flourished in Vienna during the years following the First World War. It grew out of a discussion group, the so-called “Vienna Circle”, that included such figures as Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann, Gustav Bergmann, Hans Hahn, Herbert Feigl, Edgar Zilsel, Victor Kraft, Karl Menger and Rudolf Carnap. Although they differed in regard to many of the details, the common program of this group was to provide an analysis of modern science that clearly distinguished it from metaphysics, theology and ethics. Only science and mathematics, the positivists thought, can produce genuine knowledge.

Logical positivists emphasized the unity of the sciences, and as a consequence tended to be reductionists. They used the increasingly sophisticated logical and linguistic tools of the time to help clarify both the connections between the individual sciences and the relationship between theory and obser­vation. Positivists were also empir­icists. They eventually adopted the name “logical empiricism”, and they had ante­cedents in an empirical tradition that extended back through Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell to David Hume. Many positivists subscribed to some form of phenomenalism. Rudolf Carnap, for instance, in The Logical Structure of the World, described the con­struction of the world out of what he called “elemen­tary exper­iences”. [1]

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Philosophers have never felt comfortable speaking about silence. Why should they? At best such efforts are ironic; undertaking them literally is generally thought to involve performative contradictions, since the content of what we are trying to say contradicts the fact that we are saying it. When mystics claim to have an ineffable, or inexpressible, knowledge of ultimate realities, philosophers are naturally curious to hear more about it, but of course anything intelligible the mystics may say, including the very idea of the ineffable, is by definition not ineffable but expressed, and hence self-refuting. It seems that the best solution is for mystics to maintain total silence. But even then Hegel does not leave the mystics alone. He dismisses their silent knowledge as “the night in which all cows are black” – in other words, as a presumptuous and ultimately empty achievement.

Trying to speak about silence is akin to the ontological task of trying to get something from nothing. Maybe God can create ex nihilo, but the rest of us find this hard to understand, and doing it is totally beyond us. Most philosophers cannot even bake a cake. Even ordinary people find it hard to argue with the principle ex nihilo, nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes) — and when philo­sophers are asked to make something of nothing, they seem compelled to employ humor to effect their escape. For example, in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy P. L. Heath writes:

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Raymond Smullyan is 89 years old, and lives across the Hudson in the Catskill mountains. A distinguished mathematician, logician, and philosopher, he has written over 20 books, which have been translated into more than 17 languages. Smullyan is the Oscar Ewing Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University and played a prominent role in the history of modern logic. In 1957, he wrote an influential paper for the Journal of Symbolic Logic, called “Languages in Which Self-Reference is Possible,” showing that Gödel incompleteness holds for many formal systems more elementary than those considered by Gödel. Georg Kreisel described Smullyan’s Theory of Formal Systems as “the most elegant exposition of the theory of recursively enumerable (r.e.) sets in existence.” Smullyan is probably best-known, though, for his popular collections of logic puzzles. When my children were growing up, they spent many hours with The Lady or the Tiger. My own favorite is To Mock a Mockingbird, which is about combinatory logic and the lambda calculus, one of the foundations of computer science.

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There is a story behind the title of this blog.  In 1897, Charles Peirce was invited by his friend William James to give a series of philosophy lectures in Cambridge, MA. Peirce prepared a daunting set of lectures on formal logic and, in December of 1897, sent an outline of these lectures to James. But James, sensing a mis­match between Peirce’s outline and the prospective audience, wrote back to Peirce begging him to reconsider the topic. “There are only three men,” James wrote, “who could possibly follow your graphs and relatives.” James implored Peirce to “be a good boy” and to think out a more popular plan; and James went on to make the rather unfortunate suggestion that “separate topics of a vitally important character would do perfectly well.”

Peirce was annoyed by this response (although it would have taken more than this to diminish his affection for James). He imme­diately set about revising his lectures, bestowing upon them the new title “Detached Ideas On Topics of Vital Importance.” There was considerable irony to this title, since Peirce thought there was little to be gained from either “detached ideas” or reasoning about “topics of vital impor­tance”. The latter was held up to particular ridicule in the draft of a new opening lecture that Peirce called “On Detached Ideas in General and on Vitally Important Topics” [1.649-677]. This draft is not available electron­ically, as far as I know, but it has influenced twentieth century Peirce scholarship through its inclusion in The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. [Hartshorne and Weiss, 1931] What follows is my own gloss on this text — with extended quotations to help convey the flavor of Peirce’s writing.

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